Observations on the present and future of mass customization

A demanding task for many companies today is that of learning to regard customers as individuals, of proactively developing products and services according to the individual customer preferences, and of subsequently producing and distributing these offerings. Over the last decade, mass customization has emerged as an effective approach for tackling precisely this task. In this paper, I discuss the background of mass customization and the elements of this strategy. I will then comment on the implementation of mass customization in practice. I will end with a brief discussion of alternative strategies in this domain, namely personalization and matching services.